Ownership first
- Is the store account in your business's name?
- Is the domain registered to you, with auto-renewal?
- Do you control the payment gateway account?
- Do you have the analytics and advertising accounts?
- Are there users who should no longer have access?
Start here. Everything else is academic if the previous owner still controls the domain or the payment account.
Export everything immediately
Products, customers, orders, content and theme files, before making any change. That gives you a known state to return to and a record of what you actually acquired.
It also frequently reveals data quality problems that were not visible from the front end.
Test the customer experience
- Place a real order and refund it
- Check every automated email arrives and reads correctly
- Check delivery rates for every configured zone
- Browse and buy on a phone, on mobile data
- Submit any contact form and confirm it arrives
Audit the apps and the bill
List every app, its cost and what it does. Inherited stores frequently carry subscriptions nobody has looked at for years, including several that overlap.
That exercise typically pays for the whole audit in the first month.
Then look at the numbers
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| Conversion by source | Which channels actually work |
| Margin per product | Whether the best sellers are profitable |
| Return rate by product | Hidden losses |
| Repeat purchase rate | Whether the business compounds |
| Support contact reasons | What the store fails to explain |